Freiwillige

Freiwillige ("volunteers") were non-German volunteers and conscripts who served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. The Freiwillige were largely recruited from occupied countries, but they also came from co-belligerent, neutral, and even active enemy nations. The first freiwillige soldiers were recruited by Heinrich Himmler in April 1940 when he decided to recruit non-German Aryans into the Waffen-SS, and these troops' ethnicities included Flemish, Danish, Norwegians, and Dutch. Soon after, Latvian, Estonian, and other Germanic recruits were allowed to join the Wehrmacht. During Operation Barbarossa (the German invasion of the Soviet Union) in 1941, the Germans recruited upwards of 1,000,000 Soviet auxiliaries, with most of them being prisoners-of-war. The Germans even formed their own Ostlegionen ("eastern legions") from Uyghurs, Volga Tatars, North Caucasians, Azeris, Georgians, and Armenians who opposed Soviet domination. Many of the recruits found themselves between "the red hammer and the brown anvil", and many chose to join the fascists to resist Soviet domination or British imperialism.

Typically, Germanic volunteers were recruited into the Waffen-SS, while non-Germanic volunteers served in the Wehrmacht. Besides helping the German troops fight, the freiwillige also enforced order in occupied territories, oversaw forced labor, participated in anti-partisan warfare, and assisted in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. It was estimated by Rold-Dieter Mueller that the Germans could not have made it to Moscow without their Finnish, Hungarian, and Romanian auxiliaries, could not have advanced into the Caucasus in 1942 without additional forces, and could not have stabilized the front in Ukraine without the help of 60,000 foreign conscripts and volunteers putting down partisan activity in the Balkans. After the war, many freiwillige were arrested, and several of them were executed or re-educated. (especially by the USSR)